MY BEST TWIT­TER SPAT

Pop queen Ari­ana Grande came for me af­ter I sug­gested fe­male singers should de­sist from strip­ping off to sell records: ‘I use my tal­ent AND my sex­u­al­ity all the time be­cause I choose to,’ she snapped. ‘Women can be sex­ual AND tal­ented, naked AND dig­ni­fied. It’s OUR choice & we will keep fight­ing til peo­ple un­der­stand. I say this w all due re­spect but thank u, next.’ ‘Hi Ari­ana!’ I re­sponded. ‘Of course women can do what they like, but if they/you use nu­dity to sell their records to im­pres­sion­able young fe­male fans, I’ll con­tinue to call them/you out on it. All due re­spect but thank YOU. Next.’ She wasn’t fin­ished. ‘Also, Piers Mor­gan, I look for­ward to the day you re­alise there are other ways to go about mak­ing your­self rel­e­vant than to crit­i­cize young, beau­ti­ful suc­cess­ful women. I think that’ll be a beau­ti­ful thing for you and your ca­reer or what’s left of it.’ ‘Now now, young lady,’ I re­sponded, ‘my ca­reer’s do­ing just fine thanks. For the record, I crit­i­cise/praise ev­ery­one – male, fe­male, gen­der-fluid. In­deed, I’ve writ­ten col­umns prais­ing and crit­i­cis­ing you, and you de­served both.’ Ari­ana then tweeted a spoof ad I once did for Burger King in which I lay by a fire like Burt Reynolds in a loin­cloth and medal­lion to pro­mote a beef-scented af­ter­shave. ‘When you do it, it’s ok tho, right?’ she sneered. ‘Is that your screensaver?’ I asked. ‘Nah,’ she snapped, ‘and it ain’t ur girls’ ei­ther, I can prom­ise u that.’ (Fact check: true.) Merry Christ­mas ev­ery­one – I’ll be back with my usual col­umn on Jan­uary 13.